By Lisa Yiasemides
Last night was yet another incredible night. One of the biggest names in poker took down a WPT Championship title after coming so close in previous years and they had to navigate their way through a tough field to do it.
As well as the Main Event, there were winners in the Mini and Micro editions of the 6-Max Championship, plus the three 6-Max Second Chance winners and of course, the 8-Max Knockout and Mini Knockout. The last-minute addition of a $5,200 High Roller brought the total number of titles claimed last night to nine!
With so much to cover, we’d best get right to it and there is no better place to start than with the biggest highlight of the night…
Event #04: $3,200 6-Max Championship ($3M GTD)
Last night saw the fourth WPT Main Event Champion crowned this series and the second to have their name etched on the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup. That person is Nick Petrangelo. No stranger to WPT final tables, and coming runner up twice, including in the $100,000 WPT Alpha8 in 2015, Petrangelo continues to impress.
It is no question that he is one of the best No Limit Holdem players in the world and last night he put on a masterclass, the cards-up coverage only highlighting further that he knows things about poker the rest of us don’t. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can see the action in full by clicking here.
Nick Petrangelo
Back to the action and it took a few hours for Petrangelo to cement his victory. At the start, there were seven players and one of the other most recognizable names still in contention, was Jake Schindler. A series of unfortunate events led to his demise. The first hand involved a three-bet jam with pocket-sevens from Schindler over chip leader Artsiom Prostak’s open. Unbeknownst to him, Jiachen Gong had pocket-aces behind, and he never fully recovered, busting a few hands later with pocket-kings to Prostak’s ace-three.
Elior Sion was another surprise elimination, having started the day second in chips. He had a rollercoaster of a final table and it was a brief one at that, busting on the second level. He lost the first big chunk of his stack with pocket-jacks against Petrangelo’s pocket-aces. Sion opened under the gun and, facing a three-bet from the small blind, he elected to four-bet jam, which Petrangelo snap-called. Down to less than ten big blinds, he managed to spin up once but then lost back-to-back all ins to leave in 6th place.
Jiachen Gong was enjoying his second WPT Championship after placing 7th in the 8-Max event last week. It was all looking so promising with several double-ups that saw him move from bottom to middle of the chip counts. It must have felt dreamlike when he was dealt his second pair of aces of the night, and Nick Petrangelo three-bet him all in with jack-ten suited. That was until Petrangelo flopped trips jacks, improving to quads on the turn, signalling the end.
Patrice Brandt had one of the quietest evenings of all the finalists after starting in third place and patiently waiting for those shorter than him to make a move first. It came down to two hands, the first involved Arsenii Karmatckii, with the Russian doubling with king-nine suited against Brandt’s ace-ten suited in a blind versus blind clash. Shortly after he was in a pot with Prostak after defending ace-five and flopping a pair of aces. Prostak, however, hit the gin card on the turn – a third eight to give him a set. The chips went in at that point, with Brandt drawing dead.
Also keeping a relatively low profile, appearing to follow a similar strategy as Brandt, Karmatckii had done well to evade elimination but his turn was about to come. With cards up coverage, the commentators and viewers could see it coming with Karmatckii (ace-king) and Prostak (pocket-jacks) both holding premium hands. The chips flew in preflop and Karmatckii couldn’t find a pair, leaving the competition in third place.
The heads-up part of the tournament took around two hours to play down to a winner, with the chip lead changing hands more than once along the way. After eliminating Karmatckii, Prostak started with around a 3:1 lead on Petrangelo and that lead was extended further during the first level of heads-up play. After that though, Petrangelo really started to apply pressure.
Producing some incredible bluffs (even getting Prostak to fold a flush in a hand that otherwise would have won the tournament for the Belarussian), Petrangelo steadily (and patiently) climbed into the lead. “What a clinic we are seeing,” said an impressed Tony Dunst on the stream.
Despite that, Prostak never gave up and even managed to bring it back at one point after dropping below ten big blinds, inching into the lead once more.
The advantage was short-lived though and around half an hour later Petrangelo had done it, overcoming the 999-strong field. He takes almost half a million dollars in cash, the title, his name etched on the Sexton Cup (plus a replica to take home), entry into the $15,000 Tournament of Champions hosted by Baccarat Crystal and a Hublot Classic Fusion Titanium watch, worth another $7,500!
Event #04: $320 Mini 6-Max Championship ($1M GTD)
Only 12 were left of the 2,979 entries by the time play resumed for the final day. Blinds were 20 minutes long and the first player to fall was Danilo Costa Gomes (12th). He was followed by Chris Moorman (11th), despite starting fourth in chips, and Sébastien Proulx (10th). They all added $7,970 to their bankrolls.
Fabio Sperling (9th) and Luis Gustavo Fontes Ribeiro (8th) made a ladder each, banking $11,170 in the process and with their departures, the final table was set.
Allan Udeajah (7th), Mauricio Farias (6th), Matthias De Meulder (5th) and Andrei Kriazhev (4th) were the next to hit the rail and that left the three players who had started with the biggest chip advantages still in the mix.
Thiago Azevedo Grigoletti finished were he had started – in third place. With the Brazilian’s departure, Dylan Rowe and Bruno Volkmann went heads up. No deal was struck, and the Brazilian took the top spot, rounding up four and a half hours of play. That left start-of the-day chip leader Rowe to finish runner up and bag a very healthy $93,880, which meant Volkmann ($121,980) scored the biggest chunk of the $1 million prizepool.
Event #04: $33 Micro 6-Max Championship ($300K GTD)
It may have been a ‘Micro’ event but with 7,524 registrations and $300,000 in the prize pool, there was a lot to play for when play continued last night. Thirty-nine were still in with a shot and all had locked up at least $525.
It would be five and a half hours before a winner was crowned, with Mats Ullereng of Norway going the distance, after taking out the last of his opposition, Craig Swatton. Both players made a huge return on their $33 investment but Swatton had started in second place, doing well to remain there, while Ullereng managed to climb the ranks, starting the day outside of the biggest stacks.
Pavel Kovalenko came in third, Daniel Camacho in fourth and Kalle Liefferink completed the top five and was the last player to leave without a five-figure cash. Luis Rodrigues and Michal Krůta took the last two spots on the final table, with Jakub Šenk (8th, $2,613) just missing out.
$1,575 6-Max Second Chance PKO ($250K GTD)
While the Championship events were taking place, three second Chance tournaments were also about to reach a conclusion. In the Main, 12 of the 165 starters came back to fight it out.
Georgijs Zaripovs (12th, $4,236 including $1,687 bounties) busted first and Boris Angelov (10th, $4,048 including $1,500 bounties) and Timur Khamidullin (8th, $8,661 including $5,156 bounties) also failed to reach the final table. Arlem De Souza Lisboa Arlem (7th, $10,602 including $6,140) and Viktor Zsemlye (6th, $7,569, including $1,312) had great runs too.
It was all about Stefan Huber though, who managed to see off some tough opponents such as runner up Alexandr Trofimov and Arnaud Enselme who took third place. The German takes his first WPT title and with it $57,815 (including a massive $34,898 in bounties), more than a 20 percent chunk of the $250,000 prize pool.
$162 Mini 6-Max Second Chance ($100K GTD)
There were 49 who had outlasted the rest of the 645-strong field. Andrejs Litvinenko (48th), Pavel Kovalenko (46th), Chris Moorman (43rd) and Arsenii Karmatckii (33rd) were among the early casualties. Each adding another four-figure cash to their earlier results.
Several hours later and the final table was in sight, Stefan Raschbauer (8th, $1,793 including $768 bounties) bubbled a seat. The standard was high, with well-respected players making the final five, in particular Day 2 chip leader Pascal Hartmann and eventual runner-up Fabrizio Gonzalez, but they were unable to stand in the way of Czech winner Michael Sklenička. He can add the $14,100 winnings to his $1.2 million recorded live results.
$16.50 Micro 6-Max Second Chance ($30K GTD)
Julian Stehouwer defeated the last of the 1,412 field, Carli Chait, heads up in the Micro event. That rounded up five and a half hours of play and Stehouwer banked themselves a nice return on their $16.50 buy-in.
$5,200 High Roller
There was an extra treat on the schedule yesterday evening – a late addition to the menu in the form of a $5,200 High Roller. Kristen Bicknell continues to have deep runs this series and it will be interesting to see how this result affects her already impressive points tally (she is sat in joint first at the time of writing).
Kristen Bicknell
The one-day event saw 42 entries and Bicknell’s partner Alex Foxen busted first. He bought straight back in but was eliminated shortly after in 40th. It was a similar fate for Sergei Reixach who finished in 41st and 33rd places and Niklas Åstedt, Dan Smith and Almedin Imsirovic were a few of the others who fired two bullets to no avail.
Stephen Chidwick (19th), Rob Yong (16th), Jake Schindler (14th) and Sam Greenwood (10th) made it into the top 20 but with only 6 paid, they were still a way off of the money. Arseniy Malinov pure bubbled, missing out on the $11,550 min-cash, something Sami Kelopuro (6th) would have been relieved about as it allowed him to sneak into the money.
Mikita Badziakouski took some profit home after putting the single re-entry to good use, while Elio Fox, Scott Margereson and David Peters all tried to derail Bicknell but failed, leaving the partypoker pro to scoop the $79,275 top prize.
$530 8-Max Knockout ($100K GTD)
There were 254 players (including re-entries) who flocked to play this one-day event, and with 12-minute blinds on the clock, it took well into the early hours for the tournament to wrap.
Stevan Chew left empty-handed after being eliminated in 33rd place and not banking any bounties. Thomas Boivin (29th, $657) and Pablo Brito Silva (17th $791) were just a couple of the notables in the mix, neither managing to secure any bounties either. Robin Ylitalo (8th) and Steven Van Zadelhoff (6th) had much better runs though, winning a total of $3,613 (including $2,031 bounties) and $3,601 (including $718 bounties) respectively.
With a touch over $10,000 for first place plus those lucrative final bounties, Matthew Dye was the last player standing in Pedro Garagnani’s way and the Brazilian came out on top, leaving the Brit to take runner up.
$55 Mini 8-Max Knockout ($75K GTD)
With a $3,200 Championship Main Event ticket added to first place, there was an extra incentive to win for Karl Johan Björklund, who came out on top of the 1,204 field after defeating fellow Swede Albin Lundell heads up.
Tonight’s schedule
